


Drawing Parallels to Draw Together

by Pseudthisyafucks (collettephinz)



Series: Yo Ho, Yo Ho, I've Made a Fucking Mistake [1]
Category: Youtube - RPF
Genre: Bad Parents, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Violence, chronological story telling, death of mother, disturbing rituals, disturbing upraising of a child, good parents, ritualistic killing, time jumps, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 00:30:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15327765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collettephinz/pseuds/Pseudthisyafucks
Summary: The side-by-side origin stories of Mad Captain Morrison and Felix the First Mate





	Drawing Parallels to Draw Together

Felix had been seven when taking his first life. 

The lower families had gone into immediate uproar, furious that an Asmund Prince had made his first kill before the ritualized killing he was supposed to make at age ten. The lower families had always been sticklers for customs and the old ways, but Felix’s parents had simply given their approval and waved the problem away with simpering smiles and the required sacrifice of the youngest of each family that had openly protested what Felix had done. His parents had congratulated Felix on exceeding their expectations and putting the old ways out of mind, as they had long grown bored of the original customs and much preferred the idea of Felix excelling in his first ritual killing from practiced skill and not just genetic luck. Felix’s sister had been cross, calling Felix a coward for killing early, accusing him of wanting to surpass her before his time.

Felix hadn’t responded to anyone who had accused or congratulated him. He’d just scrubbed his skin raw for three weeks on end and hated the man he had killed. 

It had been under the orchestration of his parents, he knew it. His first kill happening so early had been of their design. Felix’s first kill had also been his first teacher, an old man named Charles who had taught the children of the Kjellberg family for generations. Apparently, old age had made the man fanatical in his tutoring and had convinced himself that seven years old was the appropriate age for a pretty young boy like Felix to learn how to pleasure another man. Felix had done his best to convince Charles of the contrary for days and days before Charles had grown frustrated and pinned Felix to the wall in the privacy of Charles’ personal bedroom, stripped the boy of his clothes, and tried to stick his cock in Felix’s mouth. 

Felix had done what he thought any other young child would do in his situation. He’d bitten the man’s dirty cock off and then torn out the man’s throat with his teeth when Charles had clutched Felix’s small body to his chest in an attempt to keep Felix from escaping. The man had screamed as he’d died, and that was how Felix ended up being discovered, sitting in a daze, covered in the old fool’s blood, hollow-eyed and haunted. 

And his parents had congratulated him. 

They had _congratulated_ him, without an ounce of disgust or surprise in what Charles had done. And Felix knew insanity came slowly over the mind, he knew that his parents had seen Charles’ descent into madness (because you had to be mad to try to rape the Prince of Asmund), and had let the inevitable fallout happen. 

He knew why they’d done it, too.

_“I wonder what kind of killer he will be? He’s excelled in all areas of skill, far beyond his sister. He can use any length of blade and his aim with a firearm is impeccable. His understanding of human conviction and motivation is near omniscience. His Birth-Blade is red. Should we give him a little push? I want to know what kind of killer he will become.”_

Felix had been seven when taking his first life and the feeling of the man’s blood cooling on his skin with the taste of his disgusting flesh in his mouth, listening to the man gargle for air and die, would never leave him.

. . .

Ken was seven when his mother died.

He’d never actually been able to talk to her all that much, as talking to a creature like her was a difficulty within itself. She had a mouth and she had eyes, but she didn’t exactly know how to communicate. Most of her kind didn’t.

Her death was mourned far beyond Ken’s family. Ken liked to think the world itself grieved for her loss. Only two humans were allowed to the ceremony that was more like fluid sorrow than anything actually ceremonial. John the Feral— or as Ken called him, Father— and Ken himself. The only two humans to witness the death of one of her kind, and the only two who ever would. That seemed like the intention, at least. Ken had understood, from his father, that his coupling with his mother wasn’t regular in any way. His father had given her a human name, after all. That was as weird as weird got.

He’d named her Serenity, after the feeling Father would say she gave him. She loved the name so much that she had call Ken her Serenity rather than Mother. 

Serenity herself was a literal force of nature. She taught Ken every corner of the sky, every possible existence above their heads and how he could use the lights to his advantage. She taught him how to read the ocean and the waves and she taught him how to speak to the trees and the flowers and the grass to find his way home. Of course, the plants didn’t like listening to Ken like they listened to Serenity, but he liked to think they listened all the same. Animals were even harder. They never talked to him like they would talk to his mother. But the ocean. The ocean listened well to Ken.

That was what Ken thought he would miss the most of her. What she taught him and how happy she was to see his willingness to learn. He loved making her happy in his efforts to learn all that he could. The creatures like his mother had been confused for why Serenity had fallen for a human-like John the Feral, but they had accepted John with glad tidings and opened their arms to the child that came from them. The creatures surrounding Ken and John in their funeral ceremony glowed with the same ethereal light his mother had. As the night progressed, the lights from them grew brighter. At the cusp of the moment— as the sun set and his mother’s body sank into the ocean, weighed down with stones— the creatures raised their arms up towards the sky. Two twin lights came from where his mother’s body had sunk— lights that had once been in her eyes— and flew into the night, twisting and dancing around each other like lightning bugs. 

That was what Ken thought stars were, to this day. The many dead that were the same as his mother.

Precursors. 

The creatures who had carved the world into what it was. The beings that weathered human cruelty and created anomalies to hide the most precious things. The creators of life itself.

His mother. 

And she died when he was seven, when he was only just beginning to understand what she was and what it could mean for him. He felt like he had so much more to learn from her, but not enough time in the world to take it all in. He mourned her loss and mourned what he would never be able to know. 

John the Feral rested his hand on Ken’s shoulder. “We’ll miss her very much.”

Ken took comfort in the fact that he wasn’t alone. 

. . .

Felix lost his bed when he was eight years old. 

The success of his first kill had thrust him into the life of an Asmund three years too early and now he was facing his newest challenge. 

Locked in a tower, chained to the wall, given food only once a day, he was to remain here until he was able to escape on his own, reach the throne room of his parents, and present himself as thirteen and capable.

Except he was eight. 

He was eight.

This specific ritual wasn’t meant to happen until a child turned thirteen. 

The shackles had been too large and his parents had measured his wrists specifically to craft a pair that would fit him and only ever him because the insanity of putting an eight-year-old child to this task would likely never be attempted again. And if Felix was able to complete this ritual before starving to death (because an eight-year-old needed more than one meal a day and the lower families all thought Felix would be the first Kjellberg to ever fail this ritual) then he would not be allowed to sleep on a bed again. Not until he had the crown, if ever. His sister was older, twelve years old to his eight, and she would be crowned before he ever could. Felix would never sleep in a bed for the rest of his life. 

And he was only eight years old.

The tower was cold and wet and he succumbed to fever after only twelve hours. The men and woman that brought him his food over the next couple of days didn’t bother to hide the disdain they felt for them and what he was doing. The people of Asmund were split with their loyalty to the Crowned Kjellbergs and the wellbeing of the promising young prince. Only his parents thought he would survive this. Only they supported their decision. Felix hadn’t asked for mercy whenever being fed, but he hadn’t hidden the agony in his eyes. He wanted to be what his parents thought he was only because he wanted to escape this hell. He wanted to leave this tower. He wanted his bed. 

His own bed, the one with the feather pillows and silk sheets from the East, the one that he had slept in since he was out of infancy. He had fallen out of it once when he’d been three and had broken his thumb. And Felix had broken his thumb twice more until finally teaching himself to not move when he slept. He’d given up the truly deep, restful sleep, but he had never broken his thumb again.

Except, once receiving the idea from missing his bed, Felix realized he would have to break his thumb again. And as he’d done it several times before, he knew the hurt would force lucidity through the fever and allow him the wherewithal to truly escape. Felix could pick all five types of locks one would find in this country. He could move on lighter feet than any adult because he was only eight. Maybe he would never see his bed again, but he wouldn’t die here.

Felix broke his thumb, barely letting out a wince at the pain. He didn’t even bother picking the lock because the wood around the door was old and decayed from the moisture of this disgusting tower and it splintered away easily when he tugged at it with the curve of the shackles. He strangled the guard at the door with the chains and walked down the tower steps, through the halls, and into the throne room in the middle of his sister’s own coming of age ceremony. 

Fanny turned thirteen the day Felix escaped the tower, after being locked away for two weeks. She had been down on one knee in front of her parents when Felix arrived. Felix had pushed open the doors, walking lightly down the carpet, and then stood beside his father’s throne to observe the rest of the ceremony as he had done with countless ceremonies before. It had been his sister’s ceremony, but the court and his parents had only been proud of Felix that day. 

Felix hadn’t felt any sort of pride or accomplishment. Still suffering from fever, he went to bed on the floor of his new room that night and dreamt of the taste of a dirty old man’s flesh in his mouth. He’d woken up and vomited stomach acid before convincing himself to seek medical attention. The kindly nurse had kept his sickness a secret from his parents, slipped him a tonic for his fever in every meal, and had been mysteriously and quietly executed a week later. Felix hadn’t even known her name.

He missed his bed.

. . .

Ken was eight when his father deemed him ready for the seas. 

They left their special home, the tiny island in the center of a man-made ocean in the middle of what was once a huge island that had been mined into uselessness. Now it was a perfect circle of mountains around a sanctum of paradise that Ken and his father alone could access thanks to the anomalies Serenity had long ago placed around this place to make safe for them. 

At eight, John the Feral decided Ken was ready to sail. He’d shown extreme skill with the compass and his sense of direction was impalpable. He had the maps memorized long ago, could name animals by their calls and coats and tell where they would be going and why. He could give directions to work any manner of ship, and while he wasn’t strong enough to do much by himself, he knew his way around his father’s ship and he knew his way around everything else.

He left his home at eight and took to the seas at his father’s side, aboard the Monster’s Reveling, and never looked back. Just as his mother belonged to the world, Ken belonged to the ocean before him. His navigation skills were inhuman and his father leaned on him when it came to storms and escape. At eight, Ken was already an expert on sailing and had his eyes set on the endless horizon, and not once did he think of returning home. 

. . .

His first assignment was given to him when he turned ten. He’d been summoned to the throne room and ordered to go down on his knees in front of the thrones, in front of his mother and father. He hadn’t known he was being given an assignment until his mother had stepped forward and pulled Felix’s Birth-Blade from where it was tucked in its sheath at his side. 

His mother’s voice was flippant when she ordered for him to hold out his hand. Felix’s blood ran cold, but not from fear. His blood ran cold because that was what he’d been told to do when being assigned. Emotion wasn’t allowed. Emotion broke focus. His blood ran cold because his mind fell into something unfeeling and detached. Something inhuman.

Felix held out his hand. His mother dragged his Birth-Blade across the unmarred skin of the inside of his palm. The flesh opened and blood ran down his wrist and arm, staining his clothes, dripping to the floor. It hurt, but Felix didn’t even flinch.

“The son of the Blossom is growing too brazen,” his mother said. “He wishes to explore the anomaly at our shores. Wishes to map it. You know we cannot have that. Your first assignment will be his death. Make us proud, Felix.”

The Blossoms were a notorious trading empire that claimed it was attempting to map the world as it sold spices and minerals across what was known. Explorers making a profit. They prided themselves in their charity. 

Felix was given three months to complete his task once he’d arrived on the shores of the Southern Islands. He knew what they expected of him. Study the son— who was currently studying what was known of the seas surrounding the country of Asmund— gain his trust, break his trust with a knife in his throat. The Asmunds always emphasized some sort of poetic end in the deaths they left in the wake. Felix knew they wanted him to break the son’s preciously bright hope in the world with the plans they’d given Felix.

Felix thought the plans were limited. He could get this before sundown. His parents wanted to be impressed, didn’t they? Felix would aim to impress.

He arrived on the shore in a nondescript boat and immediately rubbed the soot from a dying fire into his hair. He knew enough about the son simply from asking simple questions. The son was named Henry, he had a positive outlook on life, and he liked giving food to emaciated children on his way to the books. 

And his parents— hilariously— wanted him to take three months.

Felix was sure this assignment had been meant for someone older than him. Someone who couldn’t pass for a starving, broken child. Someone who would have needed to endear him or herself to the beloved son Henry to gain his trust and deal the poetic death the Asmunds orchestrated. Felix would do them one better, though. He would kill Henry for his charity. It was more than poetic in Felix’s opinion. 

Felix put ash on his skin, dirt in his mouth, blackened his own eye, hid his Birth-Blade in the back of his newly-torn shorts, and waited with the other starving orphans. 

For a moment, huddled together with these trembling, lost children, he felt a sense of belonging. These helpless things couldn’t fight the hand they’d been given. They could only adapt and survive off of what they were given by those who deemed them worthy of a gift. 

Maybe Felix wasn’t exactly like them. A Prince would never fall so far as to beg, especially not an _Asmund_ Prince. But he did have to survive through adaptation. He did survive through the mercy of his parents. And he survived through his own means, by doing what he had to do, no matter the cost. No matter what it did to him or someone else. 

Then the beloved Henry came out from his perfect little castle, gracing these children with his presence. He so benevolently carried the scraps from his table in his own arms, forgoing the use of the many slaves that stood at his side. He came down to the throng of children and smiled down at them like he loved them. Felix hung back as the children all surged forward, all of them letting out small whispers of gratitude. It occurred to Felix that he would be ending their main source of survival. He would let them have this last meal.

The beloved Henry handed out the food, then looked up at Felix. “Hello there,” he greeted in a gentle tone like he didn’t want to scare him. Felix was sure all the new orphans started out little skittish. “Come forward, now. I won’t hurt you. Aren’t you hungry?”

Felix stepped forward and was able to see it, the moment in which Henry’s psyche damned him. He saw the power that came through Henry when he was able to lord his reign over the helpless orphans. It was a trip for him, a thrill. To be the only thing standing between all these children and death. It made him feel powerful. With the way his eyes darkened, Felix would dare say the thrill was almost sexual. 

Beloved Henry held out an apple, a little wilted with bruises at the sides. Felix had eaten much worse. He had even heard of stories of cannibalism among his people in an effort to finish an assignment. Felix didn’t know if he would ever be forced to stoop so low, but he found himself accepting of the idea should he be required. Thought the apple seemed much more appetizing in comparison. 

Felix stared up fearlessly into the Benevolent Henry’s eyes and reached out for the apple, but instead of taking the apple, he took the underneath of Henry’s hand. The Explorer’s eyes went wide and his smile faltered like he wanted to pull away and keep the dirt from rubbing off on him. Felix twisted his own expression into an innocent smile of his own.

“Thank you,” he said softly, before taking the knife from behind himself and driving it up into Perfect Henry’s throat. The shock the came over Henry’s face swallowed the disdain before quickly dying away with Henry himself. Blood spewed from the neck wound, bathing Felix in red. He shut his eyes and tilted his head back, letting his kill cover him and prove his superiority. The slaves cried out in fear and the orphans scattered. Felix pulled his blade from Henry’s neck and let him drop to the ground. He tore off his own shirt that was now covered in the man’s blood and left the area, disappearing into the crowd before the slaves could understand what had happened and call for help. Felix covered the blood with more ash and went back to the port shore. Word of Henry’s death would spread quickly. He knew he would be taken home in less than a day, the winds always bowing to a prosperous Asmund. 

. . .

At ten years old, Ken saved his first lot of humans. Slaves that were taken from the north and south, coveted for physical strength, striking beauty, and malleable brains. Not that their brains were weak, but they were easy to break. It was easy to break any human, to be honest. Ken hated to see it, but he’d seen plenty. His father didn’t like showing him this awful reality, but he also seemed to know it was best for Ken to learn early on that the world was full of terrible people taking advantage of the less fortunate. It was their modus operandi, their reason to be. Ken needed to know why his family did what it had done for so long. Ken needed to understand why their lives were like this. 

The slaves were all in the cargo hold, looking to be intended for labor according to the strength Ken could see in their bodies. When his father brought them aboard the Reveling, Ken set about tending to their needs. Asking if they needed food or water, what clothes they would prefer to cover their naked bodies, what treatment they wanted for their injuries. It wasn’t regular to ask them so many questions, but Ken felt their free will had been stripped away. They deserved to make choices. His father took to Kens’ methods quickly and would do the same for all slaves he rescued until the day he died. 

Ken helped save thirty-seven lives that day at the age of ten, and in that very same moment, he realized he wanted nothing more than to live on in his father’s footsteps and save hundreds of more lives after these. 

. . .

At thirteen, Felix nearly died. 

It was the first time he’d come so close to death, but it wouldn’t be the last. Still. 

You never forgot your first time. 

He’d been taking his one hundred and fifty-third life when the woman’s husband had stumbled across the bloody scene, had found Felix standing beneath his wife’s hung corpse as her blood drained from his chest and onto Felix’s face. He’d screamed and lunged, pulling the knife from his wife’s body— using Felix’s own Birth-Blade against him— and driving it into Felix’s shoulder, where his neck met the rest of his body. 

Felix was momentarily stunned. He stared into where his knife was in his body like he didn’t understand the fact that it was hurting him. Asmund Royalty being killed by their own blade? That was just a little too poetic. Felix looked up at the husband that was screaming and already grieving. He pulled his blade out of his muscle and drove it into the man’s stomach with an empty expression. He still didn’t feel any pain.

The man died. Felix wouldn’t wear his blood. He stood and left the small house— the woman was a scientific marvel, saying she saw other worlds in the stars— and wandered the empty, sleeping streets. He was supposed to return to the docks to be taken home, but. Well. He couldn’t exactly return home in this state.

For the first time in a long time, Felix was suddenly afraid. What would his parents do? He was the perfect son, he wasn’t supposed to have faults and flaws in the midst of his assignments. His kills before had been perfect. How could he fuck up now? What would be done to him? What punishment would face him? Was he going to die? Surely, now he would. His parents didn’t like failure and imperfection. Would he be locked away again? Would he have to suffer through trials to redeem himself? To prove himself to not be a failure?

Felix trembled and tore into his lower lip with his sharpened front teeth. Brought to angled edges in case he would have to tear out another throat like a dog. Maybe he could sink his own teeth into his wrist and end his own life before his parents were able to do it themselves.

The fear passed quickly and left him feeling empty. He held tightly to his Birth-Blade, finding comfort in the familiar grip. He was an Asmund Prince. He would face his death with pride.

He returned to his parents and informed them of what had happened, down to the terrifying details. His parents were displeased, Felix could see it in the tightness of their eyes and the downturned corners of their lips. More than anything, Felix was sure they were upset in being humiliated by his failure. What sort of Asmund Prince let a simple disgusting thing like a grieving man get the advantage?

Felix bowed his head, waiting to die. He felt a blade against the back of his neck. He didn’t know if it was his mother or father’s, but he kept still all the same.

The blade slid into the skin of his neck, flaying flesh from muscle. Felix grit his teeth and bore it. He’d felt worse. He didn’t know how much was carved away, but he felt relief when the pain stopped.

“You’ve paid your due for your first transgression. Find treatment for the wound we gave you, but not for the wound the man inflicted. Use it to reflect on and learn from your mistakes. You are dismissed.”

Felix left, afraid again. The blood ran down, through his clothes and following his spine. His own blood. He had almost died, he knew it. His parents could have easily driven the blade a little deeper and severed the nerves of his body. They could have crippled him and left him to bleed out on the floor. Felix had almost died. He was lucky to receive such mercy.

. . .

At thirteen, Ken watched his first person die at the hand of a monster.

He’d heard a lot of the Asmunds. His mother had taught him a few things, about how they were born of an anomaly in their own way. Their ancestors had seen things, experienced horrors unlike anything humans could withstand, and created a race of villains and reapers from it. Humans with only death in their desires. Both Serenity and John had taught Ken to always run when crossing an Asmund, to never fight. Even the Precursors feared what God had wrought against them. It went against all Ken personally believed, but he knew they would know better than him.

Their warnings didn’t prepare him for the reality he saw at thirteen. 

A gorgeous woman with nearly-white hair slicing open the chest of a child Ken’s age, holding the child above her head to let the blood pour over her body. Ken was hidden in the far corner of the room, a simple living area meant for the slaves Ken and his father were here to liberate. The now-dead child was the fat, cruel son of said slaver, so Ken felt little remorse in his death, but it was still an awful thing to listen to him die. He cried and begged and struggled even as his body was drained. His weak attempts at self-defense were useless against the woman. She was slight like a fairytale, but her lithe arms held immeasurable strength. 

Ken’s father found him after the woman had left, and after Ken had told him what he had seen, his father ordered the crew back to the Reveling and they fled the island with only those they had found so far. Ken didn’t like leaving others behind, but his father told him they would not survive a condemned island like this one. “We are better to save our lives now to save countless more later. It will hurt and you will have trouble sleeping for quite some time from now, but I promise you that, one day, you will understand.”

Ken didn’t want to understand, but he also didn’t want to see that woman ever again. The way she had smiled while bathing in the blood of the child, lifting his body over her head so the blood would fall on her face like rain. It kept him up at night much longer than the guilt of leaving people behind. 

The boy’s cries haunted him the most. They weren’t even screams, they weren’t shouts, they were just little whimpering cries, like a dog slowly dying and begging to be saved when it knew it very well was beyond rescue. Ken trembled often in his dreams after that, remembering the crying above all else. 

He hated the woman for making a child cry like that. He hated her hair and her fragile bones and her terrible smile. He hated what she was and what she had been born to do. He hated the Asmunds above all else. He knew he was supposed to run, but Ken told himself that if he saw another Asmund, ever again, he would kill them before resorting to cowardice.

. . .

At fourteen, Felix broke a little at the edges. Chipped away like stone, like the carved art that decorated his “home.” An end-of-all-things effigy to what Felix was doomed to become. He was going to be a monster and the idea broke him, but he was disappointed that it did. 

Why would this bother him? At fourteen, he had already completed over two hundred assignments. His palm was scarred beyond healing. He hadn’t failed once. He was an Asmund worthy of this title as Prince and even though his sister was older, the people wanted him as the next king. His parents agreed. They named Felix as the successor to the line, the best killer in all the nine seas. They wanted him to only improve from here. They wanted him to be the end of the world. 

Crown Prince Felix of the Asmunds.

Felix didn’t know why he didn’t want that. He felt disgusted with himself for wanting to not live up to his parents’ wishes and the desires of his people. What kind of broken was he if he didn’t seek their approval? 

What kind of broken was he?

. . .

Ken was happy at fourteen. 

Half his life with a mother, half without, and he was facing each day with a smile and excitement. He knew what he wanted in his future and he knew what it held. His father gave him reign of the Reveling whenever he was too tired to keep up as captain and his father’s men respected him just as well as they did John the Feral. They all knew Ken would become someone as great as his father one day. 

Their loyalty was a brand that Ken was happy to bear. The people he saved were the peace of mind he sought. The seas he sailed was the way he felt at one with Serenity. His mother wasn’t gone as long as there was the ocean in front of him, endless and eternal and uncaring. Just as Ken needed it to be. 

He was fourteen and happy with who he was and who he would become.

. . .

At fifteen, Felix met a boy his age. 

Nakigoe.

It was a Soirée to celebrate the beginning of Felix’s new set of trials to earn the crown. He was starting early, yet again. Normally an Asmund had to be eighteen to even be considered for the crown. He was being tested and primed at fifteen. 

And as a future bearer of the crown, he would be given a Yūzaino. 

The Yūzaino were a special race of twelve people that grew alongside the Asmunds. Their sole purpose was to be the end of Asmund Royalty. Asmunds were forbidden from killing Asmund Royalty, even within Asmund Royalty itself. So there existed the Yūzaino to act as the sole hand that was capable of killing Royalty. And each Asmund Royal was given a Yūzaino to be the only person capable of killing them.

Felix was given Nakigoe. 

He didn’t know what Nakigoe looked like, as the bandages that swathed the other boy’s face hid all features, save dark, black eyes. The Yūzaino marred the faces of their men to discourage sexual reproduction. Only the women of the Yūzaino were allowed to reproduce, as having a Yūzaino grow in the body of a woman who wasn’t of the Yūzaino was seen as an impurity and a sin. And as only twelve were allowed in the Yūzaino at a time, they would often kill male members to allow for a female birth should it be necessitated. 

All his life, Felix had been taught that the Yūzaino would be the people he could trust above all others except family because the Yūzaino would not kill any that didn’t deserve it. And they would never hurt Felix unless he brought it upon himself.

Felix liked to think the Yūzaino in front of him would have been easy to look at if his face hadn’t been ritualistically scarred and bandaged. 

“I’m Nakigoe,” the boy said with an audible smile. “If you ever stray, I’ll be the one to end you.”

Felix’s parents smiled pleasantly beside him as Felix’s life was threatened. 

Eventually, Felix was sent off to mingle with Nakigoe at his side. 

“You don’t seem to be having much fun,” Nakigoe observed.

“I never enjoy these things.”

“That’s not good, my prince. Better be careful. You’re deviating.”

“And what will you do?” Felix sent him a bland smile. “Kill me?”

Nakigoe, oddly enough, laughed. Felix flinched at the sound. He hadn’t heard someone laugh like that in a long time. 

Then, Nakigoe said, “I’m just as bored, you know. Why don’t you and I go somewhere for our own fun?”

Felix frowned. “Fun?”

Nakigoe raised a brow. “I’m warm blooded, my prince. I’m sure you have very few people you could trust. Who can you trust if not the man who wants you to live so he can fulfill his purpose in killing you?”

Felix frowned even deeper. “Are you suggesting sex?”

“Rather blunt. But yes.”

Now Felix’s frown was twisted into a sneer. “Why would you want that?” 

“Do you not enjoy sex?”

_”Enjoy it?”_

The incredulousness in Felix’s face caused Nakigoe’s eyes to reflect something that looked like he pitied him. “Of course,” Nakigoe sighed. “You’re too young to become King. You’re too young to be doing what you are. I heard you killed your first at seven. You’re too young to understand any of this.”

“You’re just as young as I am.”

“But I wasn’t raised to kill the world. Only you.” Nakigoe sighed. “Come with me. Trust me. I want to show you something.”

Felix didn’t trust him, but he followed anyway. He wondered what Nakigoe could have experienced that would make him more knowledgeable than Felix. Felix had had sex before. People existed in the world that liked younger boys that looked like Felix. The slave trade for boys like him existed for good reason. He would fetch a good price in any market. 

He knew exactly what sex entailed. Felix was meant to make sure his partner received their pleasure above all else, at whatever cost. Bruises and cuts would fade, the body would heal itself in due time, and the Asmunds were blessed with an advanced healing of the skin and quickly-mending bones. The bruising grip of hands on his wrists, legs, hips, throat. The tear of his flesh, the pain in his stomach. All of it faded away eventually, and all of it was temporary, but Felix had never been able to enjoy it. Nakigoe seemed to think he should have.

Nakigoe led him into the Northern Tower of the Elk Wing of the castle. Felix wasn’t sure how the boy had known his way through the castle, but he wasn’t really surprised. The Yūzaino were bred to be the end of Royalty. It would make sense that they had studied the castle extensively. The North Tower was where Felix’s old bedroom had been. The one that had Felix’s cot. 

As Felix looked at it now, he saw the sheets were dusty and fading. The pillow was limp. The wood was old and creaked. Nakigoe lowered himself onto the bed and splayed out his legs, looking up at the Crowned Prince with an emotion in his eyes that Felix couldn’t name.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he said. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to hurt you.” Felix didn’t believe him. Nakigoe ended up heaving a heavy sigh. He sat up and took Felix by the wrist, holding too fast for Felix to pull away without hurting either of them. “I know what it was supposed to be like,” Nakigoe said. “The Crown Prince and Princess are meant to be raised in a particular way. But they broke tradition with you. I know you likely feel all sorts of wrong. You don’t know who to trust. Believe me when I say that I am the only person in this world who doesn’t want to hurt you. Because I’m the only person in this world who is allowed to.”

Felix still hesitated.

“My real name is Cry,” the boy said softly. “My mother gave me a different name when we learned that you are a different kind of Prince. Originally, I was named outside of normalcy. All the Yūzaino are meant to have names of three syllables or more, for the eyes and the mouth. She wanted me to be more of what you would think to expect. But I can see she was wrong. You don’t want me to be a tradition. You don’t want me to be the rules you have to follow. You don’t want that. You don’t _need_ that. What you need is to feel human.” 

Cry lied back across the bed, pulling Felix down with him. “I can make you feel human,” he told Felix, bringing him down close enough for the lips to brush. Felix’s breath caught at the gentleness of the touch. He watched Cry closely, waiting for the other boy’s teeth to go for his throat. But it never happened. “I’ll show you what it’s like to be what you never thought you could.”

Cry pulled Felix down onto the bed that no longer felt familiar and loomed above Felix, rising to his hands and knees, straddling Felix’s waist. Felix’s hand instantly shot up to wrap around Cry’s neck. Being beneath another person was the most dangerous place to be. Felix narrowed his eyes up at the boy. “I haven’t deviated yet. I haven’t broken any laws.”

Cry smiled, despite the hand constricting his esophagus and threatening to snap his neck. He ran his fingers down Felix’s hand to his wrist, pressing gently into Felix’s pulse. “Rabbit quick,” Cry croaked past the strangulation. “Are you afraid?”

Felix was always afraid when pinned beneath someone. He didn’t respond. 

“It won’t hurt,” Cry choked out. “It won’t hurt.”

Felix’s thoughts hesitated. All instinct was telling him it was a death sentence to be in this position, but Cry’s touch to his pulse was— it was different. Felix hadn’t felt a touch like this before. He could almost feel the uniqueness of the pads of Cry’s fingertips. It made Felix curious. What could these fingers feel like elsewhere? What about on his face? Or his neck? Or even further? And for all of Felix’s paranoia, he’d been taught so well. 

“I haven’t broken any laws,” Felix repeated, wanting to make sure Cry wasn’t a threat.

“Indeed you have not.”

Cry’s voice was a scratchy mess. His pupils were dilating from the lack of oxygen. Felix took another moment of calculated silence before slowly loosening his grip, taking his time, letting Cry know that he was still in charge and releasing Cry out of his own will and desire, and not out of pity. Cry relaxed in Felix’s lap and smiled wider. The shape of Felix’s hand around his throat would leave a bruise for days.

“Why’d you let me go?” he asked in a rasp. 

“Your fingers—” Felix cut himself off, unsure of how much he trusted himself to confess. But he was meant to trust his Yūzaino above all others. Felix swallowed hard and ignored the twisting in his gut. It didn’t feel like fear anymore, but he didn’t know what else it could be. “Your touch,” he clarified. “I’ve never felt anything like it. I want— I want to know what it feels like in… other places.”

Cry crooned softly. “You’ve really never felt a gentle hand in your life, have you?”

“Once,” Felix confessed, his voice small. “A nurse. She died for it.”

Cry shook his head. “I’m starting to believe you’re not meant for this world.” Those fingers Felix was curious about left his wrist to grace Felix’s cheek, skimming along the warm flesh. Felix flinched at the touch out of surprise, but nothing more. It felt almost pleasant. Then the fingers traced down Felix’s neck, following the curve of his Adam’s apple, down to the dip of his collarbone, then further. Then trailed down the line of Felix’s breastbone. Felix’s body heated wherever Cry touched.

“It won’t hurt,” Cry promised again. “I would never hurt you, my Prince.”

Felix swallowed hard before reaching up and undoing the buttons on the front of his shirt. “Prove that I can take your word to heart,” he said. “Maybe I’ll learn to trust you. Maybe I’ll become something you’ll feel loath to kill, should the time come.” Felix let out a mirthless laugh. “Maybe you’ll find yourself falling for me and unable to fulfill your purpose.”

Cry smiled like the devil. “Somehow, I think I already have.”

. . .

Ken fell in love at fifteen.

She was the daughter of a doctor, a beautiful girl who found amusement in chasing seagulls down the beach. She also liked baking and she could mold Ken’s face out of clay with ease. She swam in the ocean in no clothes and laughed into the sky like she wanted to world to hear her joy. 

Her name was Heaven, and her father died soon after Ken met her.

They met in a port, really, while the Reveling was receiving repairs for the damage she’d taken while surviving a storm. Heaven’s father had been sick when they’d first arrived. The doctor of the Reveling had tried his best with what little supplies they still had, but the man died after Ken’s second day of knowing Heaven. 

To her credit, Heaven hadn’t cried. Not very much. She had been raised well and knew to keep emotions under lock and key, behind closed doors. She had no one she trusted enough to cry in front of. For the first time in his life, Ken had wanted to stay ashore. He’d never been able to resist the call of the ocean and the spirit of his mother until he’d met Heaven, and John the Feral could see that. 

“One month,” John the Feral had said. “One month.”

Ken spent one month ashore and learned of the appeal of the solid land and a companion that expected nothing from him except his company. Heaven learned she could cry in front of Ken rather quickly.

“You seem so different,” she said. “The waves listens to you and the birds enjoy your company. You’re better with the world than with the people in it. What are you?”

Ken didn’t have an answer for him because he didn’t know what he was, to the extent beyond being the son of his mother and father. He’d just laughed and told her he was whatever he needed her to be. 

They’d buried her father together. She’d talked about needing to make a future for herself. Ken had listened with patience and let her cry when the headstone was pushed into the ground. That night, it rained. It wasn’t supposed to rain for another few days; there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky. But it rained from the stars, and Ken liked to think his mother knew that Ken hurt with this girl, that Ken hurt with Heaven. And Ken liked to think Serenity mourned with Heaven because humans couldn’t dance into the stars and live forever like she could. The death of a human left you feeling nothing but empty.

“I’ll be fine,” Heaven told Ken confidently as The Reveling returned and John the Feral awaited his son upon the deck of Ken’s home. “When you come back next, I’ll have made a life for myself. Just be certain it’s one that I chose for me, and know that I stand by every choice I make.”

She’d kissed his cheek as they’d said goodbye.

John the Feral had smiled knowingly as he welcomed his son back onboard and promised, “two months.”

. . .

Felix was _broken._

Cry left not a month ago, and Felix was ruined beyond repair.

Cry had been so—

Felix couldn’t think straight whenever he remembered the night Cry had given him. The healing touch of another human had torn Felix’s world asunder. He suddenly knew that there was good in hands, a purpose beyond death. He wasn’t just meant for murder, he was could do so much more with his body, he could bring people pleasure and find it in them. He wasn’t just for bathing in blood. He wasn’t just death.

Knowing this ruined him.

He’d been given an assignment after Cry had left and Felix had completed it, he had. He’d been told to end the life of a woman of a peaceful religion, as she’d been teaching people how not to fear. And the Asmunds loved fear, they fed off of it, so of course they would teach the woman that death was nothing to shy from and the world wasn’t a place of terror. 

And Felix had found her. He’d killed her. Driven his blade into his chest, while his own hand had burned from the wound his mother had given him that would allow him to come home. Felix and driven his blade into her chest, crouched beneath her, waiting to feel her blood on his face.

She’d looked down at him and reached out to touch his face— as Cry had done that night— and smiled.

“I forgive you,” she’d said with her dying breaths. “I know you cannot help who they’ve made you to be. I forgive you.”

Felix had killed her. She’d died. But the second her blood had fallen upon his flesh, he’d vomited. He’d dropped her body and wretched stomach acid into the floor, heaving and trembling and trying not to sob. 

All his life, he’d been ending the lives of people capable of the same healing touch Cry had given him and he was a monster for it. 

_I’m starting to believe you’re not meant for this world._

Felix couldn’t do this. 

Not for the rest of his life. 

Felix couldn’t be King. 

He would rather die. 

He killed the woman three weeks ago and had wandered since. He didn’t know what would happen to him, but he knew he could never go home. He’d watched Asmunds arrive and search for him, but he was fifteen, he was able to hide from them. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he couldn’t go home. He still felt the warmth of her dying touch and the pain of her dying words. She had forgiven him, but Felix would never forgive himself. 

Felix was able to hide from Asmunds, but exhaustion overtook him. He wasn’t able to hide from everyone.

A fleet of slavers came in to port, all of them greedy and disgusting. They had no healing touch, but— 

Their blood would feel the same as hers. He couldn’t do it.

They took Felix by the neck, tied his limbs together, threw him beneath the deck with countless other unfortunate souls. None of them knew Felix, though. None of them recognized the blade or the cut in his hand. None of them saw his hair and eyes for what he was. Only the truly educated would know him and the seal. Even when captured by slavers, Felix was somehow safe.

But that wouldn’t last.

He lied his head back and waited for everything to come to an end, however that would be. Whoever he was sold to wouldn’t lay a hand on him. If there was one thing Felix knew how to do, it was how to defend himself.

He let himself fall into nothing in the darkness of the lowest deck, surrounded by the despaired dying, and asked himself if he would ever be able to forgive himself like she’d forgiven him.

. . .

Ken broke one of his rules.

He was sixteen when the Reveling came upon a fleet of slavers, traveling North. Ken knew only anomalies lied in the North, so there was no sense in their chosen direction. 

The Reveling was a beast, an anomaly in her own right. She’d easily taken down the three smaller slaver ships on her own, able to break their masts and allow the Reveling crew aboard to kill what slavers resisted and subdue the rest. They’d freed the captured people of the first ship, then the second, then gone onto the third.

Ken went below deck of the third ship first. He undid the shackles and helped those who couldn’t get to their feet. One by one, they’d all gone up, back into the sun. Ken had approached the final poor soul who was curled into a corner, hiding in the shadows.

“Don’t be afraid,” he’d told the figure. “I won’t hurt you. We’re here to help.”

The person had laughed, though there wasn’t an ounce of mirth in the sound. Then leaned forward, into the fading light of the setting sun, to reveal pale skin, silver hair, and icy blue eyes. 

Every hair on Ken’s body stood on end. The boy was his age, but he was the same as the woman. This was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This boy would kill him and bathe in his blood like the warmth of the end of Ken’s life brought him pleasure.

There was a click of a musket. 

Behind him, John the Feral lowered his gun to the head of the boy. 

Ken wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen from there, but he hadn’t been ready for what the boy did regardless. Most of his life— running into the monsters a few times more after the first— he’d learned they were spitfire and deadly. They fought to the death and died still fighting. They would sooner cut off their own limbs than be captured. They would never surrender.

This boy lowered his head and pressed the top of his skull into the musket barrel. 

Ken couldn’t explain why, but he knew that they couldn’t kill this boy. So he pushed the gun away from the boy’s head and looked to his father with a pleading expression. “He’s not like the others.”

“That’s your humanity talking. Think like your mother, Ken. We can’t allow this thing to live.”

“Can’t you see? He’s letting you do it. They’ve never been capable of that kind of surrender. You can’t kill him because he’s not like them. You wouldn’t be ridding the world of another evil, you’d be murdering a child like me.”

John the Feral hesitated. “You’re nothing like him. Look at his hand, Ken. Look how deep the scars are. He’s taken countless lives.”

“Two hundred fifty-eight,” the boy said. Then he lifted his head and looked to the gun. “If you won’t do it, I will.”

“We can’t kill him,” Ken begged his father. “We can help him.”

“Two hundred fifty-eight,” John the Feral repeated, stunned. 

Ken dropped to his knees with the shackle keys and undid the chains around the boy’s wrists and ankles. He almost expected to be killed immediately, but the boy didn’t move. His limbs fell limp to the ground. He watched Ken like he didn’t understand him. Ken remembered the kindness of Serenity and Heaven and saw there was a terrible bruise across the boy’s face. He reached out and brushed his fingertips along the line of the boy’s cheek. The touch made the boy flinch, his eyes going wide with something like pain. 

“You’re hurt, aren’t you?” Ken asked. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

“I can’t be what they want,” the boy whispered. “You have to kill me or they’ll come for you.”

Ken shook his head. “If they’re hunting you, then it means you’re not one of them. We don’t kill people that don’t deserve it.”

“Two hundred fifty-eight,” John the Feral repeated. 

“I deserve it,” the boy said. “Please. Cry—”

“Things like you can’t cry,” John the Feral interrupted.

“My name is Ken,” Ken told him. “And I help my father free slaves. Yes, you’ve taken lives. So have many of those on our crew. But they’re allowed to repent and work towards forgiveness. You deserve the same opportunity.”

The boy’s eyes went impossibly wider. They really were the iciest of blue. “Forgiveness?”

“Of course,” Ken replied. “The more you save, the more you’ll be forgiven.” Ken wasn’t sure it worked that way, but he didn’t want the boy to die. “My name is Ken. Who are you?”

The boy’s eyes darted up to Ken’s father. John the Feral sighed. “I’m John,” his father told the boy. “And if Ken wants you to be redeemed, then I will allow it.” Because his father knew that Serenity, while she wouldn’t want the monsters of the world to survive, knew that sometimes monsters weren’t meant to be what they were born into. 

“Who are you?” Ken asked.

The boy looked between them, disbelieving and wary. Then he wet his cracked lips, before casting his eyes to the floor and telling them, “my name is Felix.”


End file.
